shift a std_logic_vector of n bit to right or left

I have a vector signal tmp : std_logic_vector(15 downto 0)

I have to shift it to left or right of n bit. how can I realize this operation. I thought to concatenation operation but I didn't know how use it.

Use the ieee.numeric_std library, and the appropriate vector type for the numbers you are working on (unsigned or signed).

~~Then the operators are sla/sra for arithmetic shifts (ie fill with sign bit on right shifts and lsb on left shifts) and sll/srl for logical shifts (ie fill with '0's).~~

You pass a parameter to the operator to define the number of bits to shift:

A <= B srl 2; -- logical shift right 2 bits

Update:

I have no idea what I was writing above (thanks to Val for pointing that out!)

Of course the correct way to shift signed and unsigned types is with the shift_left and shift_right functions defined in ieee.numeric_std.

The shift and rotate operators sll, ror etc are for vectors of boolean, bit or std_ulogic, and can have interestingly unexpected behaviour in that the arithmetic shifts duplicate the end-bit even when shifting left.

And much more history can be found here:

http://jdebp.eu./FGA/bit-shifts-in-vhdl.html

However, the answer to the original question is still

sig <= tmp sll number_of_bits;

There are two ways that you can achieve this. Concatenation, and shift/rotate functions.

Concatenation is the "manual" way of doing things. You specify what part of the original signal that you want to "keep" and then concatenate on data to one end or the other. For example: tmp <= tmp(14 downto 0) & '0';
Shift functions (logical, arithmetic): These are generic functions that allow you to shift or rotate a vector in many ways. The functions are: sll (shift left logical), srl (shift right logical). A logical shift inserts zeros. Arithmetric shifts (sra/sla) insert the left most or right most bit, but work in the same way as logical shift. Note that for all of these operations you specify what you want to shift (tmp), and how many times you want to perform the shift (n bits)
Rotate functions: rol (rotate left), ror (rotate right). Rotating does just that, the MSB ends up in the LSB and everything shifts left (rol) or the other way around for ror.

Here is a handy reference I found (see the first page).

Personally, I think the concatenation is the better solution. The generic implementation would be

entity shifter is
    generic (
        REGSIZE  : integer := 8);
    port(
        clk      : in  str_logic;
        Data_in  : in  std_logic;
        Data_out : out std_logic(REGSIZE-1 downto 0);
end shifter ;

architecture bhv of shifter is
    signal shift_reg : std_logic_vector(REGSIZE-1 downto 0) := (others<='0');
begin
    process (clk) begin
        if rising_edge(clk) then
            shift_reg <= shift_reg(REGSIZE-2 downto 0) & Data_in;
        end if;
    end process;
end bhv;
Data_out <= shift_reg;

Both will implement as shift registers. If you find yourself in need of more shift registers than you are willing to spend resources on (EG dividing 1000 numbers by 4) you might consider using a BRAM to store the values and a single shift register to contain "indices" that result in the correct shift of all the numbers.

shift a std_logic_vector of n bit to right or left

Update:

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